College sports vibe rings through Coles

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Although it’s technically accurate, it seems misleading to tab Elmwood Village institution Coles as a college bar.

For more than 80 years, the Shatzel family-steered locale has provided both locals and visitors with the best version of Buffalo, whether via food, camaraderie or its Queen City-centric confines.

Stained glass accentuates doorways and dining room walls. Cathedral-appropriate chandeliers and overhead timber beams instill a regal beer hall feel. Its rotating list of tapped selections continue to serve as a bellwether for a city still growing as a premiere craft draft destination.

But stroll through its buffalo statue-topped entrance mere blocks from the front doors of SUNY Buffalo State, and you’ll find one of the city’s most cherished barrooms festooned with local and national college pennants. St. Bonaventure and UB. Dayton and Harvard. Bradley and Bucknell.

Patrons hang out around the bar at Coles. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)

Intended or not, this makes its established collegiate vibe palpable — and makes Coles a perfect place to watch the rest of this season’s college basketball coverage en route to March’s NCAA Tournament.

Whether through its Big Four loyalties or allegiance to I-90 brethren Syracuse Orangemen, Buffalo continues to have a sneakily devoted D-1 college basketball crowd. And if any of these teams awaken the echoes of Bob Lanier, Calvin Murphy or Gerry McNamara, their fans will be hard-pressed to find a bar more accommodating to their spectator, eating and drinking needs than Coles.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I stopped in for a Firestone Walker Nitro Merlin Milk Stout ($6.50) and peanut butter-slathered Jiffy burger ($13) to find all of the bar’s six overhead televisions tuned to NCAA basketball action. An Atlantic 10 matchup between SBU conference foes George Mason and St. Louis was featured on multiple screens.

Classic rock hummed through the barroom, and visitors interested in settling in for game action could choose between a vast array of drafts from San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewery, who held a “tap takeover” over the bulk of the bar’s 36 lines in early January.

From left are Gabi Gauger, Lissa Roads and Jeff Martinez, of Buffalo. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)

But no matter how important the weekend game or tourney, the bar's embarrassment of riches can relegate its televised hoop offerings as a bonus, not its primary focus. That's apt to happen when you’re the city’s marquee watering hole, a place that has dependably served up hearty dinners, friendly reunions and romantic introductions for generations. It’s a place as Buffalo as lake-effect snow, chicken wings and Rick James.

So is it myopic to refer to Coles as simply a college bar? Absolutely. But if this designation gets you in the door for the rest of this season’s NCAA basketball action, so be it — and you’re welcome.